On today's BradCast: A last minute ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, without plaintiffs even present, will allow the state to destroy electronic "ballot images" created by the state's digital computer ballot scanners in Tuesday's special election. Also, was it the fake news or the real news that tipped last year's Presidential election? [Audio link to show follows below.]

In Alabama, computer tabulators determine the intent of voters (either correctly or incorrectly), as cast on hand-marked paper ballots from Tuesday's highly contentious U.S. Senate Special Election between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones. The state Supreme Court, in a late ruling on Monday, issued a stay [PDF] that effectively reversed a lower court order [PDF] on Monday. That order had required all digital scanners in the state to be set to retain all such images created by the system as ballots are scanned through it. The stay now means that only in the exceedingly rare event of a hand "recount" of paper ballots will the public be able to oversee elections results to determine if the computers got it right on Tuesday.

We've been covering this issue for some time. (My original interview last week with election integrity and transparency advocate John Brakey, who helped organize the AL lawsuit is here.) Yesterday, it looked like a win for Brakey and the multi-partisan plaintiffs who filed in court to demand the state's retention of all digital images for inspection by the public, as per federal law requiring all election materials be retained for 22 months. But late on Monday, Secretary of State John Merrill and Alabama's state Election Administrator Ed Packard argued their case [PDF]ex parte (in otherwords, alone, without the plaintiffs there or allowed to respond) and received a favorable ruling from Roy Moore's old colleagues on the court. (Moore was formerly a State Supreme Court Justice, until twice being removed for failing to follow federal court orders.)

I spoke with Brakey and attorney working on the case, Chris Sautter, earlier today, as well as other experts. I've got details on their comments, and from the court documents, on today's show. Essentially, the state argued that state election officials didn't have jurisdiction to order county election officials to turn on the software switch on the scanners to retain all ballot images, and that doing so at the last minute, as the Circuit Court ordered on Monday, would "cause confusion among elections officials and be disruptive to" the election on Tuesday. That, even though the Circuit Court judge found it wouldn't cost the state anything to do so and that failing to turn on the setting that retains the images would lead to irreparable harm to the plaintiffs. Sautter tells me the state did not make the case for last minute confusion during the lower court arguments.

I suspect we'll have much more on that and on other problemsreported at the polls today, on tomorrow's BradCast, along with whatever results --- accurate or inaccurate (who knows?) --- that the computers may report by then.

Then, after a flurry of fake news over the weekend during the final run-up to Tuesday's U.S. Senate election in Alabama, we discuss an alarming new study analyzing the effect of both real and fake news during the run-up to last year's Presidential election. Was it so-called fake news and Russian Facebook ads that gave Donald Trump the edge to defeat Hillary Clinton last year? Or, was it a failure by the mainstream corporate media --- the "real news" --- to responsibly cover important issues that the electorate needed before casting their vote? DAVID M. ROTHSCHILD, co-author of the new study published by Columbia Journalism Review, joins us today to discuss their --- at times, remarkable --- findings.

I'd strongly urge you to read their full damning report --- particularly if you are of the mind that fake news and ads said to have come from Russia, turned this election --- because there are too many detailed and troubling findings in it for me to adequately summarize either here or during today's program.

But, to cite just one aspect of my conversation with Rothschild about the report's analysis of 150 front-page articles in the New York Times over the 69 days prior to last year's November election, he tells me: "150 stories. And of that, there were just 10 stories where they actually really touched on a specific policy initiative of either of the candidates, the ideal thing that you would want the 'paper of record' to be supplying to people. The vast majority of stories were miscellaneous campaign stories. Over 50% of them talked about the horse race. Very small percentages, 15% or less, actually talked anything about policy, with even smaller percentages actually talking about the policies themselves. It was all about the horse race, all about the scandals, not about the impact of the election itself on policy, which is ultimately why we have elections and ultimately defines the impact of these elections."

His study notes that in just six days right before the election, "The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election." That said, ironically enough, as Rothschild notes, even the MSM coverage of the purported scandals was terrible, misleading and inaccurate as well! They, and we, never seem to learn.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green New Report, as unprecedented winter wildfires continue to ravage Southern California and as the Trump Administration continues to ravage the environment...

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On today's BradCast: The three stories we cover at the top of today's show --- another long-range missile launch by North Korea, GOP tax cuts for the wealthy moving forward in Congress, and a Trump-appointed federal judge who just decided in favor of Trump (and seemingly, against the rule of law) in an unprecedented battle for leadership of a federal agency --- all underscore the importance of the rest of today's disturbing program. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

An effort just before the Thanksgiving holiday by citizen volunteers at WisconsinElectionIntegrity.org (WIE) finds that inaccurate results were certified in Wisconsin's 2016 Presidential election, which Donald Trump is said to have won by just 22,000 votes over Hillary Clinton, out of some 3 million ballots cast.

Wisconsin was one of three states, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Green Party candidate Jill Stein had filed for "recounts" and forensic audits of voting systems, after the Clinton Campaign declined to heed the pleas for such an audit by computer scientists and voting systems experts who begged her campaign to do so. Stein's post-election effort was largely stymiedby Team Trump and various statutes in each of those states. A statewide tally was allowed to move forward in Wisconsin, however only about half of the state's ballots were hand-counted, as municipalities were allowed to carry out their choice of either manual- or machine-tallied "recounts".

After finding an alarming number of uncounted ballots in Racine County precincts during last year's machine "recount" (see documentary filmmaker Lulu Friesdat's alarming coverage of election officials refusing to hand-tally clearly valid votes there during Stein's attempted "recount") the volunteers at WIE filed, and paid for, a public records request to examine the hand-marked paper ballots in a number of those wards.

Recently, they were allowed to review those ballots and, as they feared, many perfectly valid votes had gone uncounted by the optical-scan systems both during the original Election Night tally and the so-called "recount" in counties that used the same faulty computer scanners for the second count, after they had similarly mistallied ballots on Election Night.

I'm joined on today's show by longtime election integrity advocate and WIE's statewide coordinator KAREN McKIM to discuss the group's findings, revealing that the ballot scanning computers used in some 57 municipalities across the state had failed to tally anywhere from 2% to 6% of the ballots with valid Presidential votes in each of the Racine precincts they were allowed to examine a week or so ago. In other WI cities which chose to count by hand during Stein's "recount", McKim tells me, those same scanners had originally missed anywhere from 9% to 30% of valid Presidential votes! All of that in a state which Donald Trump is said to have won last year by less than 1%.

"They were ignored by the voting system entirely," says McKim, "and that's what made the miscount - or should have made the miscount obvious to the election officials even before they certified. You could look at those election results that the voting machines spit out on their face and you could see that hundreds of votes were just missing. If you compared the total number of ballots cast to the total number of presidential votes counted, you should have known --- they should have known --- that two percent of the voters didn't go to the polls so that they could cast a blank ballot. The miscounts were obvious at the time of the canvas, and the county officials did nothing about it."

Nearly a year after the election, in late September of this year, the state Election Commission finally decertified the 20-year old Optech Eagle computer tabulators, after finding that the systems fail to tally votes at all if the "wrong" type of ink is used to make selections by the voter. The same systems are still used, according to Verified Voting, in other states, such as Indiana, Massachusetts and Virginia, and may be used again in Wisconsin next year, as the state decertification allows municipalities to wait until after the November 2018 mid-term elections to replace them.

McKim, however, tells me that those faulty machines don't necessarily explain "the really widely varying error rates from precinct to precinct. ... Why the city of Racine machines were missing more votes than the suburban machines? I don't know. You'd really have to do a forensic investigation to figure that out." But, of course, Stein was not allowed such an investigation in any of the states where she sought them.

If it weren't for Stein's attempted audit, she says, the problems may have gone completely ignored. "The poll workers noticed the missing votes when they closed the polls that night. They noted it on their inspector's reports. The municipal canvas looked at it, and I talked to the Municipal Clerk, and she said, 'I didn't know what we were supposed to do about this, so I certified it and sent it to the County Clerk.' And then the County Clerk looked at those results. She too --- and again, you could not ignore a miscount of that size --- and she just said, 'Well, it's the municipality's job to send me the accurate results. Whatever they send me, it's not my job to correct it.'"

"There is not a county in the state of Wisconsin where the county election officials check accuracy of the vote totals. They all just certify by looking at the computer tape and saying, 'Oh, look who won.'"

McKim, who is a retired quality-assurance manager, says "Every other manager that uses computers, from your grocery store to the bank to the city treasurers, they all know and accept that their computers are going to miscount from time to time. So they have routine procedures in place to check and correct before it's too late. Election administrators are the only computer-dependent managers we allow to get away with not checking the computer output for accuracy. It's insane."

"The county canvass procedures clearly allowed massive miscounts, obvious miscounts, just to go undetected and uncorrected. And that's unacceptable," she added, going on to detail what the group plans to do next, and how computer tabulation systems other than the Optech Eagle, "new or old", should never be trusted for use without citizen oversight.

We also discuss what such oversight should look like, if public Election Night hand-counts are possible in Wisconsin, how citizens elsewhere can carry out similar audits, and much more during today's show...

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On today's BradCast: With the Thanksgiving holiday upon us, we take a short break from the grimmest of news on today's show to dig deep and find at least a few things to be thankful for this year. Sort of. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

With every bit of good news we find, there seems to be some less-than-good news to go along with it. Still, we do our best today to keep both your heads and mine from exploding for a change. Among the manystories covered on today's show...

Sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act ('ObamaCare') are actually up this year, despite the Trump Administration's work to undermine the federal law and keep Americans from knowing about the Open Enrollment period at all. (It runs through December 15 at Healthcare.gov). But, given the shortened Open Enrollment period, there would need to be a far higher number of signups to match last year's totals. Still, a surprising number of "free" policies are available this year and Trump supporters finally appear to be realizing that he is the one undermining their health care.

While temperatures are breaking records out here in Los Angeles (it hit a record 93 degrees today, and broke the century mark in a nearby coastal town), a new report presented at the recent U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany finds that the world could move to 100% renewable electricitywith existing technologies by 2050, and it would be less expensive than continuing to generate power with fossil fuels and nuclear energy!

There's even some good-ish news regarding guns in the U.S. A bipartisan measure to improve background checks for gun purchases, following a number of recent mass shootings, has been introduced in the U.S. Senate. Also, new polling finds that an incredible record of 94% of gun owners support universal background checks for all gun sales (and a majority of them would also support a ban on the sale of assault weapons entirely!)

In Australia, a nationwide referendum results in overwhelming majority support for marriage equality. In Palm Springs, CA, voters have just elected the first all-LGBTQ City Council in U.S. history. And, in related-ish news, Sec. of State Rex Tillerson appears to disagree with his boss, Donald Trump, regarding rights for transgender people.

And, finally, a recent demonstration by Nazis and White Supremacists in Tennessee was met by a huge resistance of counter-protesters that effectively shut down the demonstration (and another one scheduled for later in the day) entirely. Documentary filmmaker David Earnhardt was on the scene in Shelbyville, TN, and spoke to counter-protesters who stood up to shut down the Nazis. We share some of his interviews on today's show. You can watch his entire short film here.

So, see? There are quite a few things to be thankful for this year after all...Sort of...

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On today's BradCast: Have you ever considered running for office? If so, and if you're a progressive, you probably couldn't come up with a better year to it than in the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections! And my guest on today's show says he'd love to help you do it! [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today: It was another day in America, so another mass shooting. We cover today's breaking news out of Northern California where 4 were killed and 10 shot by a gunman who was eventually shot by police in a very rural and economically depressed part of the state. The shooter reportedly fired, sometimes randomly, at some seven different scenes and targeted an elementary school before he was finally taken down. While still officially unidentified as of airtime, the gunman is said to have had a history of domestic violence and neighbors who complained that he was threatening and had recently been heard firing off large magazines of gunfire in recent days. Despite his record, however, he was somehow able to legally obtain the semi-automatic rifle and two hand guns found with him after he was killed.

Republican elected officials who represent the area offered "prayers", as usual, in the wake of this latest shooting. Democratic Gubernatorial hopefuls in the state vowed to take action to help curb American's continuing gun epidemic.

In not-unrelated news, it happens to be "National Run for Office Day", as declared by a host of progressive organizations. To help celebrate, we're joined today by ROSS MORALES ROCKETTO, co-founder of Run for Something, a national progressive organization dedicated to helping first- and second-time progressive grassroots candidates --- particularly millennials, women and people of color --- step up and run for state and local offices.

The group, "born of the tears of the 2016 election", hopes to run more than 1,000 candidates across the country next year, for everything from state representative to city council to local library boards and Boards of Education. They also saw at least 32 of their endorsed candidates win races in last week's 2017 off-year elections, including a number of stunning underdog Democratic victories by first time candidates against long-entrenched Republican office holders.

Rocketto explains how and why he formed the group along with a former Hillary Clinton Campaign staffer; how they determine which candidates to endorse and help; what is needed to run and win a successful grassroots progressive campaign; and how you --- yes, YOU! --- may wish to consider visiting their webpage and getting started to run for something yourself in 2018!

"What we're really trying to do is recruit and support the next generation of progressive Democrats running down-ticket," he tells me. "We think that 2018, for example, is going to be the year of the down-ballot candidates. We know that only 5% of state legislators across the country are millennial, and the millennial generation is going to be the largest voting bloc in the next set of presidential elections. That's what we're setting out to do specifically in 2018."

"We've been hearing from people all across the country that in this particular moment, they want to make a difference in their communities. And, honestly, one of the best ways and the most effective ways to make a difference in your community is to run for office locally," Rocketto says. "The things that impacts people's lives the most on a day-to -day basis tend to be at that local level. And that's what's been so powerful about the stories that we hear from our candidates that are running."

He goes on to cite stories of some of them, like 22-year old Heather Ward in Pennsylvania, who ran and won last week for school board "in a district that is largely Republican" to become the youngest ever to serve on the board, and transgender candidate Danica Roem who unseated a virulent homophobe in Virginia's House of Delegates. We also discuss other progressive groups similarly working to recruit grassroots candidates, like Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution, which supported a 30-year old Marine vet Lee Carter, who unseated the GOP House Majority Whip in Virginia while running as a Democratic Socialist.

Also on today's program: Late updates on Alabama's disastrous GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, Roy Moore following new allegations yesterday of a violent sexual assault against a minor; Several hearings held today in the U.S. House and Senate; and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report...

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On today's BradCast, our fight against fake news --- and helping the electorate to understand which news is real and which news is fake --- continues! [Audio link to today's real show is posted below.]

Alabama's Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore continues to deny Thursday's explosive and detailed investigative report from the Washington Post, charging that when the controversial far rightwing religious zealot was a 32-year old Assistant District Attorney he sexually molested a 14-year old girl. She, like three other teens he also is said to have pursued around the same time, have all gone on record, by name, with their claims.

Despite those blockbuster charges detailed by some 30 sources in WaPo's coverage, and (somewhat cowardly) calls from Republican U.S. Senators for Moore to drop out of the upcoming U.S. Senate Special Election against Democratic candidate and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones on December 12, most GOP officials in the state of Alabama still appear, embarrassingly enough, to support Moore. Some refuse to believe the allegations at all and others don't seem to care, even if the charges are true and amount to a sex crime against a minor. One statewide elected official (AL State Auditor Jim Ziegler) went so far as to cite the bible in support of the alleged pedophilia, and another elected official (AL State Rep. Ed Henry) actually called (twice) for charges to be brought against the victims themselves.

Nonetheless, despite ongoing "conventional wisdom" that a Democrat couldn't possibly win an Alabama U.S. Senate seat, new polling taken the day the story broke shows the race between Moore and Jones is now in a dead heat. And that's data from before, as the pollster notes, the news about Moore "had a chance to fully sink in."

Then, Donald Trump's so-called "Election Integrity" Commission headed up by top GOP "voter fraud" fraudster and KS Sec. of State Kris Kobach continues to face huge problems. After eight lawsuits have previously been filed against the sham commission, on Thursday, a ninth was filed. That one by one of the Democratic Commissionerson the panel itself!

Finally today, a number of totally fake news stories (about Tuesday's election and Hillary Clinton among other things) became popular via social media this week. We debunk several of them with the help of the Associated Press fact-checkers, included several items of fake news about the American economy and trade with Japan that the President of the United States himself spread during his ongoing Asian tour.

Enjoy! (And my huge thanks to those of you who stop by our donation page to help us continue to do our work over your public airwaves every day! Please consider helping us to continue to do so, if you haven't already!)

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"This storm [Hurricane Maria] is no longer killing Americans," an exasperated Rachel Maddow exclaimed on MSNBC in mid-October. "The federal government's response to this storm is now killing Americans."

Setting aside Donald Trump's own self-assessment that his government's response was a "10" out of 10 --- that it couldn't have been better --- actual facts reveal otherwise.

Congress need not await the outcome of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia in the 2016 election, before determining if President Donald J. Trump should be impeached.

The phrase "high crimes" that appears in the Impeachment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, according to the Constitution Society, "refers to those punishable offenses that only apply to high persons, that is, to public officials, those who, because of their official status, are under special obligations that ordinary persons are not under, and which could not be meaningfully applied or justly punished if committed by ordinary persons."

It is an impeachment threshold that can be found in President Trump's reckless and callous disregard of his special obligation to protect the lives and safety of the 3.6 million American citizens who reside in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico --- a U.S. territory that the President formally recognized, as early as September 21, as the site of a "major disaster"...

On today's BradCast,something's happening here. Or is it? [Audio link to full show follows below.]

On the climate front, something is definitely happening. As of air time, three were killed in Ireland --- yes, Ireland --- from what, over the weekend, had been a Category 3 hurricane named Ophelia. It is the farthest east and north that a major Atlantic hurricane has ever been recorded. We also explain why the storm turned the blue Irish sky into an eerie orange as it came ashore.

In California, at least 40 are dead with nearly 200 still missing as of airtime and some 5,700 houses and commercial structures completely incinerated after more than a week of record wildfires have ravaged Northern California's wine country and other areas. The blazes follow California's record drought, then wettest winter ever, followed by its warmest summer ever --- all symptoms of the global warming which helped fuel the conditions that thousands of fire officials are still battling across the state. Donald Trump made his first public remarks about the deadly CA fires today, over a week since they broke out, when pressed at a hastily convened White House press conference (with hostage Mitch McConnell at his side.)

In related news over the weekend, an oil rig platform blew up in Lake Pontchartrain north of New Orleans, injuring seven (three critically), with one worker still missing. And the US-armed and trained Iraqi army faced off against the US-armed and trained independent Kurdish army in battles over oil fields in Northern Iraq. The US arms industry is, no doubt, rejoicing in the wake of Trump's increasingly chaotic and incoherent foreign policy, even as Iraq's Prime Minister had just days earlier described a possible military confrontation with the Kurds as "fake news". (Sound familiar?)

Then we're joined by the one and only HEATHER 'DIGBY' PARTONof Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog to discuss whether something is actually happening inside the White House and among Republicans in Congress as Trump's Fox "News"-fueled (read: largely fact-free) versions of both foreign and domestic policy have begun to catch up with him, and as his fury is reportedly increasing with his failure to enact any substantive legislative policies nearly nine months into his Presidency.

"This is like a cry for help that's coming from inside the White House," she tells me, citing numerous reports from dozens of sources, "that the man is losing it." But, she warns, if "cowardly" Democrats in Congress are waiting for their Republican counterparts to actually do something about it, they may be waiting a while. She descries the GOP as "the worst-of-all-possible-worlds cowardly. 'Sure, let's threaten nuclear war, let's have the entire world look down on us, let's have all soft power by the United States be completely destroyed because, you know, I might lose my seat and that's just too much.' I mean, these people are really, really cowardly."

Also over the weekend, Trump spoke at the far-right Family Research Council's so-called "Values Voter Summit" in D.C., where the "alt-right" has apparently merged with the "religious right". It was as insane as you might expect, but the question Parton speaks to is why Trump's so-called "religious right" base still buys the immoral nonsense and lies he keeps selling them.

"The idea that these Christians are seeing him as some godly creature who somehow has a biblical world view," she muses incredulously, "this is not what I had ever thought, growing up, was the standard Christian world view. They're not living in that world."

Finally, speaking of "fake news", Trump himself unleashed some remarkably fake news regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "ObamaCare"), by blatantly lying about it before a cabinet meeting today at the White House when he asserted to the gathered media: "Obamacare is finished. It's dead. It's gone. You shouldn't even mention it. It's gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare any more."

Despite Trump's unforgivable lie, the ACA is still very much federal law. Open Enrollment for 2018 begins at HealthCare.gov, where tens of millions have signed up for and received access to health care and federal subsidies to help cover its costs, on November 1...

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Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggested to the New York Times over the weekend that Donald Trump's reckless comments on North Korea and Iran and other issues, could be setting the nation "on the path to World War III." Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy argues in response that we should take Corker's --- and Trump's --- words much more seriously. Well, we do...pretty much every day here on The BradCast. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Today we discuss how, even as the President continues to threaten war with nuclear-armed North Korea, his own CIA argues leader Kim Jong Un is not a "madman", and poses no direct threat to the U.S. or its allies --- unless Trump forces him into a corner. At the same time, Trump continues to back Kim into a corner while undermining his own Sec. of State Rex Tillerson's diplomatic efforts in the region.

The claims that he's concerned about NK's nuclear program are difficult to accept while Trump seems dead set on undermining the very successful anti-nuclear agreement with Iran (and Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain), despite his own top diplomatic and military officials stating repeatedly that Iran has been honoring the deal to the letter, since it was struck under President Obama in 2015. Breaking that agreement, as Trump is threatening, will only boost the political fortunes of hard-line clergy in Iran, while undermining the moderates there who have risen in the Iranian parliament and presidency in the wake of the deal. It might also result in Iran restarting it's nuclear enrichment program that was ended by the deal, putting them much closer to nuclear weapons. So, why is Trump threatening to break that agreement by decertifying it, and sending the issue to Congress to decide whether to reimpose sanctions?

We're joined today by DR. TRITA PARSI, Founder and President of the National Iranian-American Council, which worked with the Obama White House to help shepherd the nuclear pact through Congress, to discuss why Trump is vowing to try and kill the deal, and what the ramifications are likely to be in the U.S. and Iran --- and even in North Korea --- if he does.

Parsi, is an expert on Middle Eastern foreign affairs and US-Iranian relations. He says there is simply no reasonable explanation for Trump's interest in killing the Iran deal and, as he describes today in an article at the NY Review of Books, hand a "gift" to Iran's conservative hard-liners, who already distrust the U.S.

"More than anything else, to be completely frank," he says, "this seems to be in line with almost everything else Trump has done since he took office --- which is, he just simply opposes anything that has Obama's signature on it. Whether it's the Affordable Care Act, whether it is the Iran deal. And there seems to be an obsession, on his end, to undo it for that simple reason. Because in his own administration, his Secretary of State tells him 'don't decertify'. His Secretary of Defense tells him 'don't decertify'. His Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tells him 'don't decertify'. So what is it that Trump, with his brilliant real estate mind manages to see as a flaw with this deal that no one else seems to be able to identify?"

Parsi, whose most recent book is Losing An Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, says while all parties --- including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), eight times since January 2016 --- have certified that Iran is honoring the agreement, some in Iran already see the U.S. as having broken it. He cites Trump's recent efforts at the G20 to discourage other nations from trading with Iran.

"Trump is in clear violation of Article 29 of the agreement, which says that no country shall stand in the way of what is now legitimate trade between Iran and the outside world. You can't lift sanctions as an incentive for the deal and then go and encourage countries not to trade with Iran, and that's exactly what Trump went and did at the G20 meeting," Parsi explains, adding: "Fortunately, thus far, the Iranians have refrained from further escalating this."

The larger concern is that Trump is undermining world interests in dealing with the U.S. on anything. "Why would you negotiate with Trump? What is it that gives you the confidence that he has the capacity of upholding his promises? That's the problem here. In order to get [a better deal, as Trump claims to want], you need to have the credibility of being a good and fair and trustworthy negotiator. Trump does not have that reputation anywhere."

"This is not a strategy that has any chance of success on the international stage. The only question is how much damage will it incur on the United States before Trump stops doing what he's doing right now." Parsi cautions Trump's dangerous game could result in military conflict. "It's only creating more uncertainty, which then leads to more instability, and then potentially a collapse of the deal that can bring the United States back on a path towards war with Iran."

Mission accomplished?

Finally, we're joined today by Desi Doyen for the latest Green News Report with updates on the apocalyptic wildfires in Northern California, the latest in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and the Trump EPA's hypocritical explanation for gutting the Obama 'Clean Power Plan' to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions that helped fuel 2017's record hurricane season and the fires still blazing out of control in California...

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On today's BradCast, one climate change bullet dodged on the Gulf Coast, even as another explodes on the West Coast, and Donald Trump, despite his distracting buffoonery, continues to move his far-right agenda forward as my guest today details in no uncertain terms. [Audio link to show follows below.]

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast appear to have averted another catastrophe with Hurricane Nate, the fourth hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. in the past six weeks, bringing heavy rains, but less damage than feared to the region. (Reminder: there are still two more months left in the official hurricane season!) But, millions are still struggling to rebuild from the recent storms Harvey, Irma and Maria, especially in Puerto Rico, where most of the power remains out over two weeks since Maria made landfall, despite Trump's rosy scenarios and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offering a disturbing remark over the weekend.

Even as Nate dissipates, however, the U.S. received yet another troubling reminder of the deadly perils of climate change over night Sunday and into Monday. As of air time, at least 1,500 homes and commercial building have been completely destroyed by wildfires that broke out late Sunday night across eight counties in Northern California wine country, sending tens of thousands of residents fleeing for their lives, many of them dodging flames and wildly gusting winds in the middle of the night. 10 have now been pronounced dead, in a toll that is expected to rise.

Another massive blaze erupted and is threatening homes and businesses in Southern California on Monday as well. All signs of a warming planet, not only being ignored but actively exacerbated by the Trump Administration which announced plans on Monday --- even as all of this was going on --- to reverse Barack Obama's 'Clean Power Plan', instituted to meet U.S. commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement between some 200 nations. Trump announced the Administration's intention to drop out of the Paris accord to curb man-made greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, earlier this year.

"The greatest strength that Donald Trump has in American politics --- his number one strength --- is that he is not taken seriously. And, for so long as he is not taken seriously, he is able to continue to entertain, to control the discourse, because people are just looking for what more cute, adorable, horrifying, freakish thing that he does," Nichols tells me, explaining why, despite his low approval ratings, "he knows how to survive. And his survival instinct is locking in a very coherent agenda, which is the agenda of the hard, hard social right."

"I'll be blunt with ya," he adds, "I see very little evidence of Democrats figuring out the play, either."

Among topics of our conversation, in addition to his new book and disturbing new report, are the chilling recent comments from Trump regarding "the calm before the storm"; underwhelming responses to his Twitter attacks on members of his own party (and own Administration) in recent days; the temptation (and accompanying dangers) for Democrats in making deals with Trump as his approval ratings falls; and efforts by Bernie Sanders supporters in Texas toward flipping some of the most reportedly "conservative" Congressional districts in the state from "red" to "blue". Nichols checks in today from the Lone Star State, where he is currently reporting for his upcoming cover story at The Nation on what he describes as impressive organizational work in advance of 2018, now being carried out there by members of Sanders' Our Revolution group...

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On today's BradCast, we can only hope that Donald Trump's ominous comments to reporters last night at the White House were as ill-informed and misleading as he usually is on just about everything else. [Audio link to show follows below.]

In somewhat chilling and wholly cryptic remarks during a short press avail Thursday night, Donald Trump suggested the moment might be seen as "the calm before the storm." He refused to clarify to the media, beyond gesturing to military leaders and their spouses who were at his side for a White House dinner, and adding "you'll find out." We discuss what it may (or may not) mean.

The storm he almost certainly wasn't referring to was Tropical Storm Nate, which, after killing more than 20 in Central America, is now expected to slam the U.S. Gulf Coast (possibly New Orleans) as a hurricane over the weekend.

That, even as disaster relief continues in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island more than two weeks ago. More than 90% of the island's 3.4 million U.S. citizens are still without power and some 50% without clean running water, despite recent Administration attempts to obscure the ongoing catastrophe. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in the meantime, has now publicly offered to help rebuild Puerto Rico's entire power grid with solar panels and batteries and the island's Governor seems interesting in taking him up on it. That may be a glimmer of good news --- for Puerto Rico and all the rest of us --- as the island could become a highly visible U.S. proving ground for clean, renewable energy and micro-grids.

And, in not-at-all unrelated news, Trump has nominated a top coal industry lobbyist to be second-in-command at the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as a chemical industry scientist, whose work has, for years, downplayed peer-reviewed scientific studies critical of his clients' products, to head up EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

Then, in the aftermath of last Sunday's Las Vegas Massacre, some progressives and, yes, even conservatives are calling for an idea that is rarely mentioned, much less debated in this country: amend or abolish the Constitution's Second Amendment entirely. As U.S. democracy has been stifled and bastardized so much on issues related to guns and gun safety --- and even the Constitution itself --- after years of distorting propaganda by the NRA (the gun lobby) and its tools in both government and media, we discuss the issue today, not in support of abolishing the 2nd Amendment (necessarily), but in hopes of welcoming actual debate on both that and other related issues.

Finally, several recent polls --- on issues from health care to the NFL to media to immigration to climate change --- all find opposition steadily growing AGAINST pretty much every position that Trump and Republicans hold on them. Trump, it seems, has "the reverse Midas touch", as one writer observes, in what suffices today for a bit of encouraging news at the end of another horrible week in the U.S...

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On today's BradCast, the corporate media fall for it again. They always do. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

Over the past several days, following Donald Trump's agreement last week with the Democratic Congressional leadership to extend the nation's debt ceiling (to pay our bills!) and continuing funding the government for another three months, the corporate media have been falling over themselves to declare "Trump the Independent" (AP)! A President who is "upending 150 years of two-party rule" (NYTimes) and out-Bull Moosing even Theodore Roosevelt as a "populist dealmaker able to cut through the mores of Washington to get things done" (WaPo), as he finally carves out a "bi-partisan path" forward!

Also today, as we try to begin catching up with some important news that has otherwise gotten washed away in recent days by Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, the Virginia Board of Elections has finally decertified the easily-manipulated, oft-failed, 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems used in some 22 voting jurisdictions in the state. The race is now on, in advance of their gubernatorial election this November, to replace them with verifiable paper ballots systems.

Then, after more calls on that as well, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with the continuing aftermath of the devastating and deadly Irma disaster, and a few folks who are pushing back against climate change denialism from several different surprising places...

While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!

On today's BradCast: How government subsidized lies and liars are killing the nation, the planet, and U.S. democracy. [Audio link to show follows below.]

With more than a thousand dead from monsoons in South Asia, two monster hurricanes in the Atlantic, one of them about to engulf Florida, a third one in the Gulf striking Mexico and Houston struggling to rebuild from unprecedented flooding after Harvey, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico late Thursday night, killing more than 60 and leading one wise Twitterer to observe: "All that's missing is the locusts."

On today's show (after once again marveling at Ronald Reagan's greatest, and most damaging, cons --- particularly pungent on a day like today), we check in with our friend NICOLE SANDLER, host of The Nicole Sandler Show, just north of Miami, as she and her family, unable to evacuate, are preparing to hunker down before Hurricane Irma rolls ashore and then up the entire length of the state.

Other radio hosts in the South Florida area, like con-man Rush Limbaugh, are apparently lucky and wealthy enough to be able to evacuate at the last moment before the record hurricane strikes, even after spending the week downplaying the threat of the Category 5 monster and the last several decadesdownplaying the threat of climate change by disinforming tens of millions of Americans about it over our tax-payer owned public airwaves.

Then, speaking of tax-payer funded disinformation, the head of Trump's so-called "Election Integrity" Commission, Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach, has built his career on lying to gullible Americans about voter fraud in hopes of disenfranchising as many of them (at least of a certain party) as he can get away with.

A new report finds his state has been discarding ballots at an alarming rate. But, at the same time, just days before the sham Commission he co-chairs is set to hold its second public meeting in New Hampshire, Kobach unleashes a whopper of a scam column at the wingnut "news" site Breitbart, citing new "evidence" proving that "voter fraud" by "illegal" out-of-state voters was responsible for the Republicans' narrowly lost U.S. Senate seat in NH last year, as well as Donald Trump's 2016 loss in the Granite State to Hillary Clinton.

As we detail on today's show, Kobach's deceptive "new" NH claims are easily dispellednonsense. Getting the actual facts about it, however, to the dupes, pawns, suckers and chumps who actually trust the fake news they suck up from accomplished liars like Limbaugh and Kobach at places like Brietbart and Fox "News", is a different matter all together.

Finally, still on the topic of a thoroughly propagandized nation, we close with some listener response to a caller on a recent show about Trump overturning DACA...

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On today's BradCast: Climate mayhem unleashed in the Atlantic; Legal push-back against Trump's latest anti-immigrant policy; and much more. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

On the heels of Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, one of the most ferocious Category 5 storms ever tracked in the Atlantic, is wreakingcatastrophicdevastation to Caribbean island nations as it remains on target to slam south Florida (including Trump's Mar-a-Lago) over the weekend, before creating a "buzz saw" up Florida's East Coast and into Georgia and the Carolinas. All signs suggest this is going to be exceedingly bad for the continental U.S. as well, particularly where developers successfully lobbied to ensure new construction along coastal Florida only needed to be able to withstand Category 3 hurricanes. Desi Doyen joins us for details on the reported damage and what officials and experts fear is still to come.

Then, we're joined by MAYRA JOACHIN, staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, to discuss the lawsuits filed by her organization and 15 state Attorneys General against Donald Trump's reversal of Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Joachin details the lawsuits' allegations that the Trump Administration is in violation of federal law for overturning, without a compelling governmental reason, the previous Administration's program that protected nearly one million children of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

"The Administrative Procedure Act prohibits any reversals of longstanding policies on which individuals have relied. DACA is a program that almost 800,000 individuals have benefited from. This program has enabled them to secure a job, to advance their educational goals, to obtain access to items such as a home, or to purchase a car, that they wouldn't have been able to attain without the DACA program," she explains. "This program has been in existence for now five years, and it was in place for about seven months since the Trump Administration took office. And throughout this time frame, individuals have constantly relied on a promise that they would be able to obtain temporary deferred action because of the DACA program. And the reversal of this policy without any adequate reason for doing so is a violation of federal law."

An immigrant herself from Central America, Joachin also speaks to how the new Trump policy has shaken the immigrant community. "There's fear. Fear in the fact that these individuals who will start phasing out of the DACA program can be picked up by immigration agencies and placed into removal procedures," she tells me. "These are individuals --- many of them for decades in the United States and who call the United States their home --- there's a fear as to what can happen to their relatives. Fear as to what will happen to their employment opportunities --- will they be able to secure a job? --- even though many of these individuals have worked hard for years, they've pursued advanced educational degrees, and are now facing the reality that, as of March 6th, many of them will no longer be able to be employed under federal regulations."

Joachin, whose work at NILC focuses on health insurance coverage for immigrants, also discusses how, even though federal law has not (yet) changed regarding the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), many in immigrant community are now afraid to exercise their rights when it comes to health care coverage, given the Trump Administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric. But, she also says she sees "a small glimmer of hope". You'll have to tune in to find out why.

Among the other stories also covered on today's very busy show: Right behind Irma is Hurricane Jose, now a Category 3 storm, and taking a similar same path toward some of the same Caribbean islands just ravaged by Irma; The U.S. West is being ravaged by heat and wildfires; Post-Harvey Houston is being ravaged by massive benzene releases by fossil fuel companies; A lawsuit has been filed against Texas by first responders after the state withheld information on dangerous chemicals stored at a facility that blew up during Harvey's worst flooding; And, as if all of that is not enough, breaking news at the end of today's show on the social security numbers and other personal information of some 143 million Americans (about half the country!) reportedly breached and stolen from the credit monitoring firm Equifax....

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On today's BradCast: As bad it's all been, it's about to get much worse, as the devastation from Harvey continues and as Congress returns to session following the Labor Day holiday. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But first up today: What we know and don't (and why we don't) about the explosions at a swamped chemical plant north of Houston; Russia warns the U.S. that further sanctions against North Korea would be "dangerous"; U.S. continues diplomatic tit-for-tat with Russia by ordering several more diplomatic facilities closed, and; Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now reportedly working with NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in their criminal probes of Team Trump in what could serve as an end run around Donald Trump's pardon power of his associates at the federal level, and even a hedge against the possibility of the President removing the Special Counsel from his post in some way.

Then, as horrible as August has been on so many levels, TPM Congressional reporterALICE OLLSTEIN joins us for some breaking news, and to explain why September could be even worse as Congress reconvenes next week following Summer recess, with "a nightmarishly short calendar during which they must pass a host of bills" to, among other things, approve a budget to keep the government from shutting down and avoid a federal default by raising the debt ceiling.

That, along with the need to fund disaster relief for Harvey, reauthorize children's healthcare and the national flood insurance programs by the end of the month, amid ongoing feuds between Trump and GOP Congressional leadership while the President threatens to shutdown the government if Congress fails to fund his border wall, almost assure what Ollstein characterizes as "The September From Hell".

Even if we had a "Congress who generally got along, and generally got along with the President," Ollstein tells me, "it would have been so hard to pass all of these bills that are coming up. But we don't have that. We have a President who is attacking members of his own party --- leaders in his own party --- and the opposing party. We have a lot of bad blood."

Add to it all the Trump/GOP hopes of passing huge tax cuts ("an even heavier lift than health care reform," she says) and today's late breaking news from Ollstein, fresh off a call with the Health and Human Services Dept. announcing the Administration plans to slash the Affordable Care Act's advertising budget by 90% in advance of this year's truncated Open Enrollment period, and it all amounts to not only a September from Hell, but likely a rest-of-the-year from same.

Enjoy the upcoming holiday weekend if possible, but buckle up thereafter, as Ollstein warns: "We thought it couldn't get any crazier than August, but get ready."

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with more coverage of the ongoing devastation from Harvey, before we finish up with some actually very good news concerning nuclear power, solar power, and the nation's largest utility company...

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On today's BradCast, the Harvey disaster continues, even as skies clear over Houston. And a Democratic Congressman joins us to blast several of Trump's new policies, issued as the record storm was rolling in. [Audio link to show follow below.]

Floodwaters have begun to recede a bit in Houston, as some sunshine finally returns and the airport begins to re-open after five hellish days. But its only "the end of the beginning" in the Bayou City, cautions one meteorologist as Harvey moves back onshore near the Texas/Louisiana border, continuing to threaten lives there and in states to the north, even as officials expect the death toll in and near Houston to surge in the days ahead. Moreover, a nearby chemical plant in Crosby is likely to explode soon, due to the flooding, according to the company's CEO.

All of this as Congress prepares to return from their long Summer recess after Labor Day, and members respond to some of the startling Executive Actions taken by Donald Trump as the record-shattering hurricane slammed ashore last Friday night.

We're joined by CONGRESSMAN HANK JOHNSON today to discuss some of those actions, including the President's pardon of former Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for violating federal court orders against detaining Latinos on nothing more than suspicious of being undocumented and Trump's less-noticed Executive Order reversing President Obama's restrictions on the Pentagon's infamous "1033 Program".

On the Arpaio pardon, Johnson tells me: "President Trump has proclaimed loudly, by that action, that he will use the power of the presidency to benefit himself, and to benefit his supporters, his friends, and his family. And so it does not augur well for a future for this country under Donald Trump."

"To follow up the notorious pardon of Joe Arpaio with a rescinding of President Obama's executive order which placed limits on the Pentagon's 1033 program --- it does send a clear message to law enforcement that it's open season on the civil rights of anyone who you choose to violate the civil rights of. It's not a good thing for America."

The DoD's "1033 Program" supplies surplus military weapons and equipment --- such as automatic rifles, mine-resistant vehicles, armored drones and even grenade launchers --- for free, to local law enforcement agencies around the country. Johnson has been introducing and re-introducing his bi-partisan "Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act" (H.R. 1556) for three successive years now and explains today --- as Republican Sen. Rand Paul appears to agree in the Senate --- why curbs must be placed on the program.

In an op-ed by Johnson, to be published by the Guardian on Friday, he explains one of the things that "makes it dangerous is the fact that 1033 requires that the equipment be 'placed into use' within 12 months of being acquired." He tells me today that means that "if they don't use them, then they have to turn them back in. And so it's a recipe for misuse. It's a recipe for abuse of civil rights of the citizens who law enforcement is sworn to protect and serve. It's frightening that this onslaught of weaponry, straight from the battlegrounds of Afghanistan and Iraq, will find its way back to the streets of America's cities and towns."

The controversial program originally came to the nation's attention after military vehicles and gear were deployed by local law enforcement in Ferguson, MO in response to protests after the police killing of African-American teenager Michael Brown in 2014. After the nation was horrified by the militarization of local military and it was discovered that some weaponry had been disappearing, or was being sold by local agencies, Obama placed restrictions on the program that Trump, last Friday night, lifted with a stroke of his pen.

I also ask Johnson about whether he believes Congressional Republicans from Texas will support Harvey disaster relief upon their return next week (unlike after SuperStorm Sandy slammed the East coast in 2013), about his Election Integrity bill, and whether he intends to join fellow Democrats in the House who have filed Articles of Impeachment against President Trump.

Finally, Defense Secretary James Mattis appears to be separating himself somewhat from Trump --- though not nearly as much as some on the Left are suggesting --- following the order to ban transgender members of the U.S. Military and saber-rattling with North Korea. And, as more longtime State Dept. officials announce they are leaving, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's job may be on the line following a clear separation from the President's "values" following Trump's statements about neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville...

While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!